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A TRUE LOVE STORY 






Copyright, 1894, by the 
Chicago Literary Club 


AUTHOR'S PREFACE 


While I sympathize with the Chicago 
Literary Club in its desire to find, if possi- 
ble, in its ranks some man who as a novel- 
ist might rank with Mason as a historian 
and with Thompson as a poet, and while I 
confess the right of the Club to experiment 
with its members for the purpose of dis- 
covering what ones may conceal some 
signal ability for finding the most of inven- 
tion and the least of fact, yet I cannot but 
feel that it was almost an insult to a clergy- 
man to ask him to give a specimen of 
“ sheer fabrication ” to a society composed 
almost wholly of members of the legal 
fraternity. 

David Swing. 








CHAPTER I 


HE name of Linda Mellet car- 
ries the mind far back in time 
and far away in space, and 
asks the heart to transfer itself 
tothebanksof the Mississippi, 
and to the earliest days of this 
century. The Mellet family had left France 
when Louisiana was still in possession of 
the old nation. The fame of the great river, 
of its fertile banks and perennial spring, had 
induced some of the poets of an earlier day 
to call that district the “ Second Eden.” 

Inasmuch as the term “Eden” sounded 
oftentimes like an exaggeration, the region 
was named “ Louisiana” after the eighteen 



7 



A TRUE LOVE STORY 


monarchs who had lived and perished be- 
tween 778 and 1773. Between Charles the 
Great and Louis Philippe there stood a long 
line of Louises. Distinguished among these 
were Louis le Debonnaire, Louis the Child, 
Louis the Bavarian, Louis the German, 
Louis the Stammerer, Louis the Simple, 
Louis the Sluggard, Louis the Fat, Louis 
the Pious, Louis the Lion, Louis the Obsti- 
nate, and Louis the Fourteenth. When 
France contemplated the histories and the 
tombs of all these illustrious children, she 
took away from our Southwest the name 
of “ New Eden ” and called it “ Louisiana/’ 
Soon afterward a part of the west bank of 
the river sank under such a tremendous 
weight of French virtue. 

The marble home of Linda Mellet escaped 
this submergence, but from her attic win- 
dow she could see the tops of the sunken 
forest, and where once had stood cypress- 
trees a hundred feet in height were to be 
seen now a few green bushes growing out 
of the new lake which had been excavated 
by the awful machinery of nature. This 
8 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


tract of land was eighty miles long and 
seventy wide, and was more than six months 
in sinking out of the sight of the beautiful 
Linda. 

The parents of this girl whose history 
became at last a more impressive shock to 
the Southwest than the earthquake of New 
Madrid, brought to the New World great 
wealth as well as great taste. They erected 
at once a home that was in full sympathy 
with the architectural glory of Louis the 
Magnificent. The home of Linda was on a 
high bank on the west side of the river. On 
the front it reached over nine hundred feet, 
while in depth the structure, which assumed 
the shape of two L’s, ran back two hundred 
and seventy feet. In the open court in the 
rear the western sun made possible all the 
flowers and fruits of the tropics. Governed 
by the kind hand of the amiable girl, this 
rear court was a perfect bower for all the 
birds of bright plumage and sweet song. 
So wild and untouched by man was the 
landscape that often when Linda, by wav- 
ing her parasol, was chasing the buffaloes 
2 9 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


from the front porch, she could hear the 
American nightingale singing in the fig- 
trees at the other end of the long hall. 

The attic room to which allusion has 
been made was the resort and retreat of the 
gifted young woman only in hours when 
she wished to work at the musical sonnets 
which were rapidly giving her a local fame. 
Her own proper room was on the second 
floor, and, being fifty feet in width, ran back 
one hundred and thirty-two feet to the open 
court. A second course of marble columns 
graced the front of her apartment. The 
stone, the ironwork, the brass, the mahog- 
any fastenings, the carvings, all came in 
sailing vessels from France. 

The floor of Lindas chamber was carpeted 
with rugs which had been recaptured from 
a pirate’s ship that had overhauled mer- 
chantmen plying between the Orient and 
Boston . These costly fabrics had been con- 
fiscated by Lord Bellamont in 1699, and had 
been purchased by an ancestor of this beau- 
tiful girl. 

Her bedstead was made of mahogany, 


10 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


and on this dark wood was almost endless 
filigree of silver. On the top of each bed- 
post was a globe of gold, so made that one 
of them told the sleeper the hour of the 
day, another the day of the month, another 
the day's lesson from the Book of Common 
Prayer, while the fourth played for the girl 
beautiful French melodies. 

Before the east windows of this room lay 
the Mississippi, with its deep waters full of 
prophecy regarding a wonderful republic ; 
before the west windows lay the savannas, 
where grass mingled with vine and shrub, 
where the dogwood excelled the magnolia 
in whiteness, while the magnolia excelled 
the dogwood in perfume. 

In one of these half-forgotten years Linda 
ran down the marble stairs in impatient 
haste ; for, behold ! at her palace door stood 
Francois August, Vicomte de Chateaubriand. 
At his left hand stood a youth of noble 
form and of distinguished face. An air 
of romance seemed to breathe from his 
large blue eyes. He could at once have 
sat for the portrait of an ideal lover; but 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


the charms and the probable destiny of this 
young Frenchman were overshadowed by 
the amazing genius and fame of the older 
visitor. 

After Chateaubriand had implanted a few 
kisses upon either cheek of the dear exile 
from Paris, he sat down with the family, 
and told them soon that he had come to 
the New World that in a story to be called 
“Atala” he might treasure up the sweet 
and sublime things of an Eden that must 
soon pass away. He brought kisses also 
from Madame Recamier, who was then in 
her twenty-fifth year, and was as wonder- 
ful in her court dresses as Chateaubriand 
was in the pages of his rhetoric. The great 
writer had just received from all civilized 
lands infinite thanks for his “Genius of 
Christianity.” It had made atheism un- 
popular, and had made Christianity resem- 
ble closely a gallery of art, or one of those 
thousand-acre fields from which the people 
of Smyrna extract the attar of roses. Laden 
with unbounded fame, the eloquent thinker 
longed to compose a story in honor of prim- 


12 



Linda Mellet. 
















V 






f 



















JL . i -tr- r k i 






V- - ' 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


itive nature. Little did this wanderer dream 
that the two young people now listening so 
intently were about to live a story many 
times more thrilling than that of Atala. 
While the prose poet of France was deline- 
ating the life of the red woman, these two 
white exiles from Europe were to weave a 
friendship too vast to be dreamed of by an 
Indian maiden. 



>5 



CHAPTER XIII 

HATEAUBRIAND contempla- 
ted in youth the career of a 
priest, but he was frightened 
away from the pulpit by the 
narrowness of its literary 
scope. Genius of a high or- 
der does not toil well under any . form of re- 
straint. Genius does not love with ortho- 
doxy to fix the number of gods at three : 
because days or nights might come in which 
the mind might feel that there were four po- 
tentates in the sky; and then other days or 
nights might sweep along in which it would 
seem task enough to establish firmly the ex- 
istence of even one such celestial monarch. 



16 



CHAPTER XIV 



is not a little against the 
charm of the sermon that its 
manufacturer feels under a 
% common-law promise to make 
use of facts. The sermon dis- 
courages imagination in the 
fields of history and science, and permits it 
to exercise its function in only the depart- 
ment of theology. The sermon may de- 
scribe hell as best it likes ; but in speaking 
of Illinois, for example, it feels bound to 
locate the State in America, and does not 
feel willing to separate it many miles from 
Lake Michigan. Chateaubriand sighed for 
a general release from such galling chains, 
»7 


3 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


and, in addition to the privilege of locating 
hell or heaven where he saw fit, he desired 
full permission to do what he might please 
with Louisiana and Atala. 

Among the labor-saving devices one must 
reckon a certain sweet and delicious false- 
hood. A Marquette, in writing a history 
of the Indian girl Atala, would have been 
compelled to travel, observe, tear his clothes 
upon thorns, go often a day without food, 
swim streams, sleep in a smoky wigwam, 
and hear a great quantity of poor French 
spoken by squaws not wholly attractive in 
custom or costume. Creative genius uses 
an easier method. It goes away from the 
object it desires to describe. It asks dis- 
tance to make dirt and beauty one. It asks 
only distance to make a negress and a Greek 
girl look alike. It goes into its attic room, 
and, looking far away upon the smoky hills, 
sees an Indian woman eating a piece of raw 
liver, and at once it says: “\ have seen 
Minerva alight on the summit of Parnas- 
sus. The perfume of her divine breath 
reaches me. Her cheek glows with eternal 
18 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


youth. Her gold girdle flashes in the sun. 
She has a lute in her hand. Oh, I am full 
of rapture ! Come, my pen, and help me tell 
the story of the goddess and her mountain ! ” 
And at the call the pen comes. We must 
all thank Chateaubriand for what he has 
done toward lessening the quantity of labor 
for all literary shoulders. If you would 
transform a poor picture into a good one, 
you must step back a half-mile. If the 
assumed goddess looks like a squaw, you 
must step a league further back. High 
literature is fond of magnificent distances. 



9 



CHAPTER XX 



5FTER a night of refreshing sleep 
Chateaubriand began to com- 
pose some fresh literature. 
Linda repaired to a bower in 
the courtyard, and to some 
songs of her own compos- 
ing played an accompaniment upon a harp. 
Sappho herself could not have been more 
beautiful nor have caroled more pleasing 
melodies. The morning hour, the happi- 
ness of the birds, the glitter of dewdrops, 
the perfume of blossoms, the presence of 
the greatest intellect of France, and the 
flood of romantic life that flowed in the 
young girl’s heart, combined to make the 


20 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


soul regret that the name of Eden had been 
taken away from the vale of this new France. 
In any court of Europe Linda would have 
been exceptional in beauty, but her face and 
form became almost angelic when they thus 
found a setting among the most wonderful 
and exquisite beauties from the hand of 
Omnipotence. 

When Chateaubriand had composed a 
few pages, he strolled into the court, and, 
sitting upon a marble bench over which 
Linda had thrown the robe of an American 
lion, read a group of magnificent words 
that gave a picture of the scene which was 
about to surround the Indian girl Atala as 
it now surrounded the noble Linda. As 
the genius read, the air became clouded 
with green and red and yellow parrots. 
The groans of the river, evoked by its sad 
efforts to roll uprooted forests down to the 
Gulf; the sighing of the trees which the 
waves were undermining ; the dancing of a 
thousand rainbows that were made by un- 
seen cataracts ; the whispering of the bridges 
which the vines had formed from tree to 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


tree, joining the pine to the top of the pop- 
lar, and the poplar to the top of the holly- 
hock, over which entangled vines the wild 
rose and clematis were running in joyful 
haste that they might make of the suspen- 
sion-bridges an interminable garland of 
flowers ; the eagles, the water-fowl, the 
red flamingos, the large and small herons, 
the flashing humming-birds ; the wild bear, 
intoxicated by eating too many wild grapes ; 
the black and the gray squirrel, the majestic 
buffalo, — all united to make Linda’s heart 
swell with emotion and with thankfulness 
that her days were passing in so blessed 
a land! Overcome with emotion, she sang a 
low, sweet song. Chateaubriand bestowed 
upon the girl’s lips another kiss which he 
had brought from Madame Recamier, and 
arm in arm they passed from the bower to 
a well-stocked sideboard that had done per- 
petual duty for Louis XIV. 


22 


CHAPTER XXV 


RAVELING merchants, such as 
sell books and lightning-rods 
in the homes of the common 
people, are first taught to re- 
cite a brief address. This ora- 
tion is composed for the man 
or woman by the person who publishes the 
books or owns the factory. On entering a 
peaceful home, he considers the head of the 
family to be an adequate audience and 
begins at once to recite his part of the 
play. His function, intellectually, is only 
that of a poll-parrot. It has not been 
long since one of the members of this 
industrial family entered my own home 
23 




A TRUE LOVE STORY 


at the cross-roads, and discoursed as fol- 
lows : , 

“ Of all writers, none except Job equaled 
Shakspere. Shakspere should lie open in 
presence of the young. This book holds 
the mirror up to nature. The young are 
captivated by its sentiment, while the old 
are sustained and comforted by its wisdom. 
A home without a well-edited and well- 
illustrated Shakspere is as sad as a home 
without a mother. Here, sir, is * The 
Family Shakspere.’ Here you see a steel- 
engraving of the soldiers carrying away the 
core of Ophelia.” “Do you not mean the 
corpse of Ophelia?” I said. He said that in 
the cities and centers of light the word used 
indeed to be pronounced corpse, but that 
core was now the pronunciation adopted by 
the persons of most advanced culture, 
Chateaubriand saw the air all colored with 
clouds of gaudy parrots. Similar men of 
genius say that at the dawn of this century 
those beautiful birds were working their 
way to the Ohio, and had begun to chatter 
on the line stretched by Mason and Dixon. 


24 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


What became of those clouds of parrots? 
Their story is short but sad. Coming to 
the Ohio, and seeing the advancing line of 
book-agents, they all turned back. 



4 




CHAPTER IX 



JET us now return to Linda. 
With hair falling negligently 
upon white shoulders, with 
eyesfull not only of beauty but 
of soul, she asked the mighty 
exile if he actually had ever 
seen a bear that had been rendered an in- 
ebriate by eating grapes! “ I was taught 
that fruit contained no intoxicating prin- 
ciple until its juice had passed through the 
process of fermentation. Did not diges- 
tion make wine impossible ?” 

Chateaubriand then kissed Linda, and 
said : “ Ah, my dear child, there is a new 
literature coming which deals only in im- 
26 


Impressionism X la Recamier. 













A TRUE LOVE STORY 


pressions. It is called the Impressionist 
school. If I see a bear among grape-vines 
in autumn, if he wabbles and rolls around 
a little as he advances or retreats, if I am 
under the impression that the bear is drunk, 
my impression is of much more value than 
a fact. So in my notes on Niagara Falls I 
am to describe that cataract. I shall use 
the following language : * Eagles, carried 
along by the current of air, are whirled down 
to the bottom of the gulf ; and carcajous, 
hanging by their flexible tails to the ends of 
the bending branches, wait to snatch from 
the abyss the crushed bodies of bears and 
elks ! ' Now, Linda, no man of true artis- 
tic feeling can inquire whether the air over 
the cataract does suck eagles down. Have 
I an impression that such a suction would 
add power to my page, then down must go 
the eagles into the abyss, because the im- 
pressions of a sensitive, gifted soul are far 
better than many eagles. Nor need I re- 
member that the carcajou has a tail too short 
to be wrapped around a limb, and that the 
animal might watch a whole century before 
29 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


a mangled elk would pass under his dan- 
gling head. I was under the impression that 
the falls were much enhanced by the picture 
of that living denizen of the woods watch- 
ing for the bodies of those slain by the awful 
power of the watery avalanche/' 

Linda bowed before the greater genius, 
and sat in silent and almost solemn admi- 
ration. 



30 


CHAPTER XXX 



this point the young French- 
man joins the company, and 
from this date he changes 
the color of the whole pic- 
^ ture and the destiny of Linda. 

We must soon add great 
misfortune to great beauty. 

And now the youth, who had been eclipsed 
by the presence of the great man of letters, 
begins to assume a captivating part in this 
story of human and Western affection. He 
and Linda often, while walking, were ac- 
customed to fall a few steps behind the 
famous poetical essayist ; and while the elo- 
quent tongue was discoursing about the 
3 1 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


wars of the red man, or the cedars of Leb- 
anon, or the tombs of the Orient, the lis- 
tening children would press each other’s 
hands gently and exchange a few kisses 
that had nothing to do with Madame Re- 
camier. If, at intervals, the famous Cha- 
teaubriand paused that the audience might 
draw nearer the speaker, soon some vine 
crossing the path would impede Linda’s 
foot, and while the vine was being disen- 
tangled from skirt and foot there was more 
touching of hand to hand and more myste- 
rious reading of happy eyes. Each step in 
the primeval forest was a step in love. 
Each bird-song became a love-song ; and 
when the thrush poured out a heart full of 
melody, the charming Linda would look up 
toward the songster, and whisper out : 
“Oh, sweet bird, those are my senti- 
ments ! ” Silent kisses followed, and in 
the mean while Chateaubriand would dis- 
course about the brook Kedron and the 
Vale of Sorrows. 

These scenes came before any steam 
palaces had begun to move on sea or river. 

32 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


Linda went to New Orleans and back in an 
elegant barge. It floated down with the 
current. It was pushed back by poles, or was 
drawn by a line held by slaves who walked 
slowly on the shore. In this barge was a 
complete home. Bedchambers, library, par- 
lor, dining-rOom, kitchen, wine-room were 
under the roof. The carpets, the tapestry, 
the pictures, the piano, the harp, joined in 
one rich scenic effect. The roof of the barge 
was flat, and, being covered with sheet-lead, 
it held rich earth, and was made to hold up 
a most beautiful garden. The orange-tree 
was in perpetual bloom. Twining roses ran 
along the railing around the edge of the 
barge. The morning-glory made the dew- 
drops more brilliant. Birds lived in this 
traveling bower, and got their food from 
the hand of the girl whom all that lived 
could but love. A few girl slaves, dressed 
in brilliant colors, dipped up water from 
the great river and cared tenderly for the 
fruit that was ripening, and the rose that 
was bursting with color and perfume. 

On the ioth of June, 18 — ,the Melletfam- 


5 


33 


A TRUE LOVE STORY 


ily and the two guests went down into this j 
barge, and soon were out in the gentle cur- 1 
rent. When one is in a floating paradise 
why should one wish to go fast ? Slowly 
moved the barge on a journey which to the 
idolized Linda was to bring no return. Her 
heart passed into a long period of cloud. 

N.B. This story is a serial, and will be 
read in sections until the Club may seem 
satisfied. 



HERE WITHAL ENDS A TRUE LOVE 
STORY WHICH WAS WRITTEN FOR 
THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB AND 
WAS READ BEFORE THE CLUB ON 
THE EVENING OF MONDAY THE THIR- 
TEENTH OF NOVEMBER, MDCCCXCIII 
THIS EDITION CONSISTS OF TWO 
HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN COPIES PRI- 
VATELY PRINTED FOR MEMBERS OF 
THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB BY 
THEO. L. DE VINNE & CO. NEW YORK 



DECEMBER 1894 





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